Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers Routledge Advances in Film Studies 1. Nation and Identity in the New German Cinema Homeless at Home Inga Scharf 2. Lesbianism, Cinema, Space The Sexual Life of Apartments Lee Wallace 3. Post-War Italian Cinema Daniela Treveri Gennari 4. Latsploitation, Exploitation Cinema, and Latin America Edited by Victoria Ruétalo and Dolores Tierney 5. Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear Julian Hanich Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear Julian Hanich New York London First published 2010 by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2010 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereaf- ter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trade- marks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hanich, Julian, 1975– Cinematic emotion in horror films and thrillers : the aesthetic paradox of pleasurable fear / by Julian Hanich. p. cm. — (Routledge advances in film studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Horror films—History and criticism. 2. Thrillers (Motion pictures)—History and criticism. 3. Motion picture audiences. I. Title. PN1995.9.H6H355 2010 791.43'6164—dc22 2009040612 ISBN 0-203-85458-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-87139-5 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-85458-6 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-87139-6 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-85458-7 (ebk) For Henriette and Hans-Peter Contents List of Figures ix Acknowledgments xi PART I Introduction 3 1 How to Describe Cinematic Fear, or Why Phenomenology? 38 2 Multiplexperiences: Individualized Immersion and Collective Feelings 52 PART II 3 Frightening Fascination: A Phenomenology of Direct Horror 81 4 Intimidating Imaginations: A Phenomenology of Suggested Horror 108 5 Startling Scares: A Phenomenology of Cinematic Shock 127 6 Anxious Anticipations: A Phenomenology of Cinematic Dread 155 7 Apprehensive Agitation: A Phenomenology of Cinematic Terror 202 PART III 8 Moments of Intensity: Lived-Body Metamorphoses and Experienced Time 221 viii Contents 9 Moments of Collectivity: The Cinema of Fear and Feelings of Belongingness 241 10 The End 252 Notes 257 Bibliography 281 Index 293 Figures I.1 Pinhead (Doug Bradley), the fascinating monster in Hellraiser. 7 2.1 The shower murder in Psycho. 71 3.1 Direct horror: House of 1000 Corpses. 82 3.2 Daring a fearful look: Danny Torrance (Danny Lloyd) in The Shining. 96 3.3 Painful somatic empathy: Szell (Laurence Olivier) tortures Babe Levy (Dustin Hoffman) in Marathon Man. 105 4.1 Suggested horror: Alien 3. 109 4.2 Imagining Satan’s son: Rosemary (Mia Farrow) in Rosemary’s Baby. 124 5.1 Cinematic shock: Alien. 128 5.2 Unexpected Identity: Max Cady (Robert De Niro) dressed as a woman in Cape Fear. 132 5.3 Disrupted relief: Jason (Ari Lehman) attacks Alice (Adrienne King) in Friday the 13th. 139 6.1 Cinematic dread: The Silence of the Lambs. 156 6.2 A constricting experience: Frame-within-the-frame shot from Dark Water. 174 6.3 Motor mimicry: Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) tries to recover his lighter in Strangers on a Train. 182 7.1 Cinematic terror: Alien: Resurrection. 203 x Figures 7.2 Chase-and-escape terror: Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) and Sally (Marilyn Burns) in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 208 7.3 Extreme camera angle: The death of Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan) in Scream. 209 10.1 Arthouse horror: Henry (Michael Rooker) in Henry— Portrait of a Serial Killer. 253 Acknowledgments The way from the valley of darkness to the summit of light is not a straight ropeway drive up to the mountaintop. Writing an academic study does not imply that you enter the gondola at a station called “Ignorance” with your intellectual rucksack in your hands, store everything safely under your seat and leave the gondola after three or four years of idle refl ection and some minor reshuffl ings and reorderings of your baggage at a station called “Understanding.” Doing research means embarking on an extensive march on long and winding roads, hidden serpentines and rocky paths. Initially, you start out with little baggage, but gradually you add mate- rial on material, which makes your journey even more complicated and exhausting. Fortunately, on your way up you meet other hikers who some- times lead you astray into dangerous fi elds, but more often recommend shortcuts, tell you where to fi nd panoramic views and clear paths through the undergrowth when you are lost in dense woods. Sometimes they carry parts of your luggage or tell you what you can leave behind. The best and brightest are even strong enough to lift you up. Standing on the shoulders of giants has been a special privilege on my way. Without those other hik- ers, ramblers and giants I would have been lost, had given up or returned bewildered, confused, and defeated. Consequently, these intellectual com- panions deserve thanks—and more. Winfried Fluck, Vivian Sobchack, Gertrud Koch and Thomas Elsaesser were of particular importance. Jesco Delorme, Johannes Völz, Mario Grizelj, Robin Curtis, Philipp Hübl, Tarja Laine, Oliver Jahraus, Walter Metz, Stefan Brandt and Simon Remberger supported me in various other, important ways. Furthermore, I would like to send out a very special thanks to the Cusanuswerk, the foundation that more than generously supported my work for over three years. Thanks also goes to the University of California Los Angeles and the University of Amsterdam. Courtesy of those two places I was not only provided with a strong intellectual environment but also with a well-oiled infrastruc- ture for a whole year. Last but not least I want to express my particular gratitude to the members of the Research Colloquiums of the Film Studies Department and the John F. Kennedy Institute of North American Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. Part I Introduction It is a common observation, that objects which in the reality would shock, are in tragical, and such like representations, the source of a very high species of pleasure. This taken as a fact, has been the cause of much reasoning. (Edmund Burke)1 [T]he audience knows what they’re coming to see, they’ve paid their six bucks. They’re saying, ‘Okay Mr. Barker . or okay, Mr. Cronen- berg, okay, Mr. Lynch, or whoever the director is, horrify me. (Clive Barker)2 THE PARADOX OF FEAR: I’M AFRAID, THEREFORE I ENJOY Can fear be pleasurable? In February 1949 the director Alfred Hitchcock publishes an article in which he raises this extraordinary question. Writ- ing in the magazine Good Housekeeping, of all publications, Hitchcock tackles the matter in an amusing and anecdotal way: “I was discussing this point with an old friend not long ago. ‘Fear,’ he said, ‘is the least pleasant of all emotions. I experienced it when I was a boy, and again during both wars. I never want my children to experience it. I think it entirely possible, if I have anything to say about it, that they’ll live their entire lives and never know the meaning of the word.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘what a dreadful prospect!’ My friend looked at me quizzically. ‘I mean it,’ I went on. ‘The boys will never be able to ride a roller coaster, or climb a mountain, or take a mid- night stroll through a graveyard. And when they’re older’—my friend is a champion motorboat racer—‘there’ll be no speedboating for them.’ ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, obviously offended. ‘Well, now, let’s take the speedboat racing, for instance. Can you honestly tell me that the sensation you get when you cut close to a pylon, or rough water, with a boat riding close on one side and another skidding across in front of you, is anything but fear? Can you deny that a day on the water without fear, without that prickly sensation as the short hairs on your neck rise, would be an utter dead failure? It seems to me that you pay lots of money a year for fear. Why do you want to deny it to your sons?’ ‘I’d never thought of it quite that way,’ he said. And he hadn’t. Few people have. That’s why my statement, made in all sincerity, that millions of people every day pay huge sums of money and go to great hardship merely to enjoy fear seems paradoxical.”3 4 Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers Can fear be pleasurable? Answering this unusual question will be the purpose of the approximately 300 pages that follow. Why do we, at times, deliberately and voluntarily expose ourselves to what seems to be a nega- tive emotion—an emotion that we desperately wish to avoid in everyday life? How can we even think of spending our precious leisure time by driv- ing to a movie theater and watch a fi lm entitled, say, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)? Why pay at the multiplex box-offi ce to be frightened and shocked by a movie that promises the Dawn of the Dead (2004), let alone The Evil Dead (1981)? Behind these questions lies the basic paradox that I will deal with in this study.